For some strange reason, the page up and page down buttons on my keyboard never cooperated with Pages. What I wanted to be able to do was to simply hit those keys on the keyboard, and have Pages scroll up or down to the next page.
You'd think it would do that, but it doesn't. It would always scroll a little more or a little less than a page. Quite maddening. There is a little blue scroll triangle at the bottom of the page that can be clicked to do that, but I wanted to do it with the keyboard.
The macro editor QuicKeys was my solution. I was able to write a simple macro to click that button, and assign the action to the key.
The details:
Create a new shortcut in QuicKeys.
The action is to 'press button.' The location of the button is specified by the number of pixels relative to a defined location; in this case, the left lower corner of the Pages window. On my monitor it was 357 pixels horizontal by -7 pixels vertical, for the page down click, and 339 horizontal by -7 for the page up.
[crarko adds: I thought one might be able to assign keys in Pages using System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Application Shortcuts. To my surprise, Pages (and Keynote and Numbers) did not show up in the list of applications I could choose to assign a keyboard shortcut to. I could add it using 'Other.' Is this because the iWork suite is installed by default into a subfolder in /Applications?]
When confirming wether faces recognized by iPhoto '11 are actually correct, some will be wrong and need to be rejected.
iPhoto gives the hint to 'Click to confirm or Option-click to reject,' yet the easier and faster way to reject would be to simply double click the image, after which it will be marked as 'Not (name).'
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. Yet another undocumented feature of iPhoto.]
My previous solution to auto answering FaceTime calls involved AppleScript, which required 'Access to assistive devices' to be enabled. I thought this method , while it worked, was too cumbersome, so I began to dig into FaceTime to find a way around the whole AppleScript approach. I fired up the Terminal to start hacking away at FaceTime.
and, to my surprise I found two little preference strings of text called AutoAcceptInvites and AutoAcceptInvitesFrom.
It turns out that Apple has included the ability to auto answer FaceTime calls, and not only that, but AutoAnswer calls only from callers you specify. I wish I would have checked for these strings a month ago.
Open up the Terminal.app located in your /Applications/Utilities folder.
Type in the following command to allow a specified caller for auto accept incoming calls (substituting the appropriate value for indentifier):
Here's how to edit a cell in Numbers that already has data in it, but without moving your fingers from the keyboard to the mouse.
Select the cell, then press Option+Return. The blinking insertion point should be placed at the end of the cell's text.
I don't know if Excel has this feature, but I've wanted something like this for years!
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. It's kind of an odd key combination, but it works. I tried it in an old version of Excel, and Option+Return simply moves down a cell in it.]
Here are some fun gestures you can use in iPhoto that I couldn't find documented anywhere. When in edit mode, two finger gestures do some nifty things! First, open a photo in iPhoto and enter Edit mode.
While in Straighten Mode:
You can fine tune the amount of tilt using the 'rotate' gesture in either direction. Rotate Left to decrease the angle, Rotate Right increases the angle (it feels backwards whenever I do it).
While in Crop mode (with constrain turned on):
If you pinch inwards the crop frame gets smaller and retains its shape.
If you pinch outwards the crop frame gets bigger and retains its shape.
If you keep both fingers in approximately the same configuration and move them about, the entire crop frame will move without changing size (unless you run into an edge, in which case the crop frame will shrink if you continue to push it against the edge).
When you un-check constrain, things get a little crazy. Since the crop corners map directly to your fingers, you can change the overall crop shape from rectangular to square, or vice versa.
Suppose you set your right thumb and pointer on the trackpad (thumb bottom left quadrant, pointer top right).
If you move just your thumb (still in the bottom left quadrant) then just the bottom left handle moves in the same manner.
If you move just that pointer finger (in the top right) and the just top right handle moves.
Move both simultaneously and both handles move.
iPhoto seems to map the finger locations as relative, rather than absolute, though. Following our prior example, moving the thumb to a location where it is higher up the trackpad than the pointer finger, but still to the left of it, would cause the top left (as opposed to bottom left) handle to move. Similarly, the pointer finger would now relate to the bottom right (instead of bottom left) handle. This happens when you move one finger past another with regards to left and right as well. Two finger scrolling seems to lock in the crop frame, just as before.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. I don't have one of the fancy newer trackpads that supports these gestures. Plus I've always used an external editor with iPhoto anyway.]
When creating a DVD in iDVD something you would like to add additional content or files to the DVD that you distribute. Maybe some pictures, a link to your website, or maybe a iPod/iPhone/iPad sized version of the movie. I distribute highlight DVDs of my son's football games and I add a HD version of the video to the disc.
Open your iDVD Project.
Select the Advanced » Edit DVD-ROM Contents menu item.
Click 'New Folder' (this will add an 'untitled folder' to the window).
Double click the 'untitled folder' to edit the name.
Select your the folder you just re-named, and click 'Add Files.'
Browse to the folder to select you files.
When done adding files close the window.
Remember you are limited on the total amount of space on your DVD. To view the amount of spaced used on your disc. Select Project » Project Info.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. This is one of those things which is obvious if you've already done it, but maybe not so much if you haven't. I can imagine people have created new projects when they could have added to an existing one.]
This is an update to this previous hint about creating a smart album that gathers all of your video files that are stored in iPhoto.
In previous versions of iPhoto, the user had to create a condition for each type of movie file that might possibly exist in the library (.mov, .avi, etc.).
The latest version of iPhoto can find all movie files for you, without having to add each extension, but the specific rule is not obvious.
When you create a new Smart Album the condition is actually found under the 'Photos' header. Chose Photos from the first drop down box and in the next two boxes you can choose 'is - Movie.'
iPhoto will gather together all of your movie files stored in iPhoto, regardless of their extension.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. You can also do a search in the iPhoto Search box by Keyword = 'Movie' and that will find them although it doesn't create the Smart Album.]
I shoot a lot of HD video of my kid, and at first I struggled to find a good balance between maintaining the full-resolution original footage and having something a little more reasonable and lightweight to work with. For example, even on my one-year-old iMac, I can't smoothly scrub the full HD video clips in the editor -- but if the clips have been 'optimized' to 960 x 540, they're smooth as butter (and still look good enough for almost every output scenario).
If, when you're importing the original footage, you enable the "Optimize video" checkbox, you'll get the lightweight version in your event library, but you won't get a copy of the orignal footage as well. It'll still be on your camera (or wherever else you put it before heading to iMovie), but that's not very helpful.
If you're using iMovie '09 (v.8) or '11 (v.9), there's a decent way to do this that isn't terribly obvious.
So here's what I do:
When importing the original footage, disable the 'Optimize video' checkbox, and select the 'Move files' radio button. This will move the full HD clip into /[selected volume]/iMovie Events/[event title]. (Or you can use 'Copy files' and get the same end result.)
Select the new event in the Event Library in iMovie, and go to File » Optimize Video » Large -- 960x540 (or 'Full,' which is still going to be more compressed than the original HD, but at the same resolution; I find 'Large' to be just fine for my needs, though).
That second step takes the original HD clip that was in /[selected volume]/iMovie Events/[event title] and moves it into /[selected volume]/iMovie Original Movies/[event title], and then puts the optimized version into /[selected volume]/iMovie Events/[event title].
Now you've got a fully organized directory structure containing all of your original HD footage, sorted by event, plus an Event Library full of nice lightweight versions for quick editing and exporting.
I love the Faces part of iPhoto but I got tired of clicking 'Accept' on the hundreds of photos it found for each person in my family.
Because the face recognition is pretty accurate, there are usually pages and pages of photos to 'Accept.' Instead of clicking each one, click in an empty space near the corner of the Confirm Faces page and drag select to mark 'Accept' on all of them.
Now, it's easier to fix the mistakes that iPhoto made; all you have to do is click the image thumbnails once to change 'Accept' to 'Reject.' It's much faster to do it this way because the face recognition system makes so few mistakes.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. It's an annoying thing in iPhoto that 'Select All' from the Edit Menu doesn't do the same thing as drag selecting in this process.]
Today I saw a hint on using AppleScript and Automator to enter special symbols into a document.
That is fine if you need only a few special symbols, but I am a meteorology student, and almost every equation has almost every Greek symbol. Apple allows software re-mapping of keys, which you can do by hand, but there is also an application for doing that.
A freeware program called Ukelele gives you the option to do whatever you wish to your keyboard. All you have to do is click on a key on the screen then use the special characters window to enter in whatever symbol you want. It's tedious but once completed you don't have to change it again.
Unless you change the US keyboard, it is best to make a new keyboard, which you can then switch between in the menu bar as long as you check 'Show Input menu in menu bar' in System Preferences » Language & Text. You will need to go there anyway to enable your new keyboard.
Using this process I was able to set my keyboard so that when the caps lock is on, instead of yelling, it uses the Greek keyboard map for both lower and upper case. If the caps lock is on and I hold the option key down, then I get English layout. If caps lock is off but I hold down the option key, I get special math symbols I normally use such as ° ƒ × ∫ ∬ ∆ π, including an occasional important Greek letter. You are not limited to just one symbol though, you can have a key print off word or a string, though there seems to be a limit of 19 characters.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. As a Mathematics major a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away I remember the joys of trying to print all sorts of special characters longhand. I always felt badly for the poor people trying to grade those papers, although I later was one of them myself.]
My previous solution to auto answering FaceTime calls involved AppleScript, which required 'Access to assistive devices' to be enabled. I thought this method , while it worked, was too cumbersome, so I began to dig into FaceTime to find a way around the whole AppleScript approach. I fired up the Terminal to start hacking away at FaceTime.
